RUBBING THE BELLY OF GOD
AND A HAPPY ONE-YEAR ANNIVERSARY OF THIS HERE SUBSTACK WITH YER PAL SKIPP!!!
I knew it was comin’, yet forgot to bake a cake. So here — 164 episodes later, on the very first anniversary of this column’s humble beginning — is a reprisal of the very first genuinely meaningful post I posted.
So here it is, reprinted for your pleasure. AND MINE! I love this one. And hope you will, too.
Love YOU!!! And thank you for tuning in!
AUTHOR’S NOTE: Over the past eight trillion years on Facebook – or at least until I quit cigarettes, beer, and writing novels – my nightly wind-down from a long stretch of writing was to take my last flickers of intellectual candlepower (a phrase pilfered from the great David J. Schow) and do a quick soul-dive.
Which is to say, I’d go, “How does the universe look and feel to me tonight? Do I have any messages of hope worth sharing? Any insights on craft and creativity that might come in handy? Any perspective on the day’s events? Stupid jokes? Absurdist gestures?”
If the answer was yes – and it usually was – I would slap that sucker down with the last of my strength, then stagger off my writing porch with my faithful laptop Snappy and keel over for the night.
Over the years, these became my most popular Facebook feature. And my friends (yes, ACTUAL FRIENDS, smartass!) would often hound me to compile them into a book. Which is a big part of why I started this Substack column in the first place.
So here is the first of many entries to come, from the “Greatest Hits” collection I’m now rigorously assembling.
You’re watching the non-fiction book take shape here, folks!
And I hope that you enjoy.
***
Many many many of my favorite things about being alive have nothing to do with a book I wrote or published, a movie I made, some other accomplishment I managed to tick off by sheer dint of love and labor. Though every speck of that counts like crazy. It's the shit that keeps me running.
But so much of the best of EVERYTHING comes down to just rubbing an animal's belly, or hugging a child. Laughing with friends. Being reduced to tears by a song that sideswipes and reminds you how you truly feel. Catching the sun as it rises, sets, casts a certain light on a certain place you inhabit in that moment, and go, "Fuck. That is beautiful."
Everything I ever managed to create that was worth a shit was informed entirely by those little moments that matter so much to the tiny, skittering eyes of God we are. Each and every one of us. Through the marvel and pain.
The universe is watching us, because that's what we're made of. And we are helplessly watching it, because that's who we truly are.
THANKS, UNIVERSE!!! THANKS, EVERYBODY EMBODYING IT!!! This is the dance we're in. It's what we're made of.
That said: so much of it is so horrible that it's hard to believe. And that's the part that makes you wonder why the fuck we exist at all. All happy horseshit aside, LIFE IS INSANELY BRUTAL. Believe me: if suffering weren't part of the equation, I'd have devoted my life entirely to cute puppy-cuddling stories. And been perfectly fine with that.
But given the universe we appear to be interwoven in, telling the honest truth about our experience -- however ugly, sweet, funny, poignant, whatever -- seems like the job. At least the job for me!
So I guess my meandering point is: I am so grateful for having a life that feels so even remotely worth living that I want to throw pure unadulterated love at every moment -- little or big, sublime or horrific -- that might remotely help put the whole fucking thing in perspective.
It just seems like both the least and the most I can do.
THANKS FOR BEING THE EYES OF GOD, TOO!!!
Not making any promises, but I love to think that maybe, eventually, we might work all this shit out.
And that, for me, would be as close as we're liable to get to Heaven.
Rubbing the belly of God.
And getting ours rubbed back.
Hell yes!!
And Happy Anniversary!